Two federal judges have announced that they will no longer be hiring clerks from Stanford Law School following a protest held by the university’s students against a conservative judge who visited last month — where the students screamed vile attacks against the judge, including wishing harm on his daughters.
This is Stanford’s elite law school. Watch the egregious behavior of the administrator, but also the students. They feel comfortable treating the speaker (a judge) this way. They will eventually be judges. Wokism will wreck havoc on society. pic.twitter.com/fnahtKx6vU
— Mythinformed (@MythinformedMKE) March 11, 2023
On Saturday night, circuit court judges James Ho and Elizabeth Branch — both of whom were appointed by former President Donald Trump — announced that they would not hire any clerks from Stanford Law School during a speech to the Texas Review of Law and Politics.
The announcement also came after 14 judges, including Ho and Branch, stated in October that they would not be hiring clerks from Yale Law School in response to the university’s pervasive “cancel culture.”
The decision stems from a protest led by Stanford’s associate dean for diversity, equity and inclusion — where they accused Judge S. Kyle Duncan of causing “harm” to students.
During Duncan’s speech at the school’s chapter of the Federalist Society, student protesters ambushed the conservative judge — calling him “scum” and wishing harm on his daughters in response to perceived slights against “gay rights.”
Despite the fact that the students had clearly violated Stanford’s policy against disrupting and heckling speakers, the university refused to discipline the protesters — although they did place Tirien Steinbach, the dean who escalated the protest, on leave following the incident.
“We will not hire any student who chooses to attend Stanford Law School in the future,” Ho, who serves on a federal appeals court in New Orleans, reportedly said during the speech while responding to the incident.
“Rules aren’t rules without consequences,” the judge reportedly added. “And students who practice intolerance don’t belong in the legal profession.”
While the anti-free speech protesters are clearly a concern should they be hired to work for a judge, the clerkship moratorium for both Yale and Stanford students will not apply to current students — only those that choose to enroll in the schools in the wake of the blacklist.
“My concern is how law students are treating everyone else they disagree with. I’m concerned about what this is doing to the legal profession—and to our country,” Ho reportedly said.
“Students learn all the wrong lessons,” he added. “They practice all the wrong tactics. And then they graduate and bring these tactics to workplaces across the country. What happens on campus doesn’t stay on campus. And it’s tearing our country apart.”
Ho has not provided any details of what would convince him to reverse the blanket moratorium, but did state that things “have gone much more smoothly this year” at Yale since the boycott was announced.
“Imagine that every judge who says they’re opposed to discrimination at Yale and Stanford takes the same path,” he said, according to the Washington Free Beacon’s transcript of his speech.
“Imagine they decide that, until the discrimination stops, they will no longer hire from those schools in the future. How quickly do we think those schools would stop discriminating then?” Ho asked.
